Developing and Managing Your School Guidance and Counseling Program

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Part I: Planning

Chapter 1: Evolution of Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Programs: From Position to Services to Program

Chapter 2: A Comprehensive School Guidance and Counseling Program: Getting Organized to Get There From Where You Are

Chapter 3: A Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Program: Theoretical Foundations and Organizational Structure

Chapter 4: Assessing Your Current Guidance and Counseling Program

Part II: Designing

Chapter 5: Designing Your Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Program

Chapter 6: Planning Your Transition to a Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Program

Part III: Implementing

Chapter 7: Making Your Transition to a Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Program

Chapter 8: Managing Your New Program

Chapter 9: Ensuring School Counselor Competency

Part IV: Evaluating

Chapter 10: Evaluating Your Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Program, Its Personnel, and Its Results

Part V: Enhancing

Chapter 11: Enhancing Your Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Program on the Basis of Needs and Evaluation Data

Appendixes

A. American School Counselor Association Ethical Standards for School Counselors

B. Guidelines and Template for Conducting an Annual Time–Task Analysis

C. Guidance Program Evaluation Surveys

D. Sample Board of Education Policies for Referrals and for Student Guidance and Counseling Programs

E. Sample Job Descriptions

F. Procedures for Helping Students Manage Personal Crises

G. Impact of Program Balance and Ratio on Program Implementation

H. Multicultural Counseling Competencies

I. A Procedure for Addressing Parental Concerns

J. Presenting . . . Your Professional School Counselor

K. Reassignment of Nonguidance Duties

L. Sample Activity Plan Formats

M. Descriptors Related to Evaluation Categories

N. Observation Forms for Counseling, Consultation, and Referral Skills

O. Standards for a Guidance Program Audit

P. Sample Memo Regarding Major Changes and New Program Recommendations

Index

Technical Support

End User License Agreement

Developing & Managing

Your School Guidance & Counseling Program

Fifth Edition

by

Norman C. Gysbers

Patricia Henderson

5999 Stevenson Avenue

Alexandria, VA 22304

www.counseling.org

Copyright © 2012 by the American Counseling Association. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

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American Counseling Association

5999 Stevenson Avenue

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Cover and text design by Bonny E. Gaston.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gysbers, Norman C.

Developing & managing your school guidance & counseling program / Norman C. Gysbers, Patricia Henderson.—5th ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-55620-312-1 (alk. paper)

1. Educational counseling—United States. I. Henderson, Patricia, Ed.D. II. Title. III. Title: Developing and managing your school guidance and counseling program.

LB1027.5.G929 2012

371.4’220973—dc23

2011023182

Dedication

To School Counselors and Their Leaders

Preface

One of the most fundamental obligations of any society is to prepare its adolescents and young adults to lead productive and prosperous lives as adults. This means preparing all young people with a solid enough foundation of literacy, numeracy, and thinking skills for responsible citizenship, career development, and lifelong learning. (Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2011, p. 1)

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, the United States continues to undergo substantial changes in its occupational, social, and economic structures. Occupational and industrial specialization continue to increase dramatically. Increasing size and complexity are the rule rather than the exception, often creating job invisibility and making the transition from school to work and from work to further education and back again more complex and difficult.

Social structures and social and personal values also continue to change and become more diverse. Emerging social groups are challenging established groups, asking for equality. People are on the move, too, from rural to urban areas and back again and from one region of the country to another in search of economic, social, and psychological security. Our population is becoming increasingly diverse.

All of these changes are creating substantial challenges for our children and adolescents. A rapidly changing work world and labor force; violence in the home, school, and community; divorce; teenage suicide; substance abuse; and sexual experimentation are just a few examples. These challenges are not abstract aberrations. These challenges are real, and they are having and will have a substantial impact on the personal–social, career, and academic development of our children and adolescents.

Responding to Challenges

In response to these and other continuing societal and individual needs and challenges, educational leaders and policymakers are in the midst of reforming the entire educational enterprise (National Association of Secondary School Principals, 2004; No Child Left Behind Act of 2001; Race to the Top, 2011; Zhao, 2009). Guidance and counseling in the schools also continues to undergo reform, changing from a position-services model to a comprehensive program firmly grounded in principles of human growth and development. This change makes guidance and counseling in the schools an integral part of education and an equal partner with the overall instruction program, focusing on students’ academic, career, and personal–social development.

Traditionally, however, guidance and counseling was not conceptualized and implemented in this manner because, as Aubrey (1973) suggested, guidance and counseling was seen as a support service lacking a content base of its own. Sprinthall (1971) made this same point when he stated that the practice of guidance and counseling has little content and that guidance and counseling textbooks usually avoid discussion of a subject matter base for guidance and counseling programs.

If guidance and counseling is to become an equal partner in education and meet the increasingly complex needs of individuals and society, our opinion is that guidance and counseling must conceptually and organizationally become a program with its own content base and structure. This call is not new; many early pioneers issued the same call. But the call was not loud enough during the early years, and guidance and counseling became a position and then a service with an emphasis on duties, processes, and techniques. The need and the call continued to emerge occasionally thereafter, however, but not until the late 1960s and early 1970s did it reemerge and become visible once more in the form of a developmental comprehensive program.

This is not to say that developmental guidance and counseling was not present before the late 1960s. What it does mean is that by the late 1960s the need for attention to aspects of human development other than the time-honored cognitive aspect of learning subject matter mastery (Cottingham, 1973, p. 341) had again become apparent. Cottingham (1973) characterized these other aspects of human development as personal adequacy learning (p. 342). Kehas (1973) pointed to this same need by stating that an individual should have opportunities to develop intelligence about his [or her] self—his [or her] personal, unique, idiosyncratic, individual self (p. 110).

Reconceptualization of Guidance and Counseling

The next step in the evolution of guidance and counseling was to establish guidance and counseling as a comprehensive program—a program that is an integral part of education with a content base and organizational structure of its own. In response to this need, Gysbers and Moore (1981) published a book titled Improving Guidance Programs. It presented a content-based, kindergarten through 12th-grade comprehensive guidance and counseling program model and described the steps to implement the model. The first, second, third, and fourth editions of our current book built on the model and implementation steps presented in Improving Guidance Programs and substantially expanded and extended the model and implementation steps. This fifth edition expands and extends the model and steps even further, sharing what has been learned through various state and local adoption and adaptations since 2006.

Organization of This Book

Five phases of developing comprehensive guidance and counseling programs are used as organizers for this book. The five phases are planning (Chapters 1–4), designing (Chapters 5 and 6), implementing (Chapters 7–9), evaluating (Chapter 10), and enhancing (Chapter 11). In several chapters, ways to attend to the increasing diversity of school populations and the roles and responsibilities of district- and building-level guidance and counseling leaders are highlighted. The appendixes offer examples of forms and procedures used by various states and school districts in the installation of comprehensive guidance and counseling programs. Also included as an appendix are the ethical standards of the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) and the Multicultural Counseling Competencies of the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development (Arredondo et al., 1996; Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992).

Part I: Planning

Chapter 1 traces the evolution of guidance and counseling in the schools from the beginning of the 20th century. The changing influences, emphases, and structures from then until now are described and discussed in detail. The emergence of comprehensive guidance and counseling programs is highlighted. Having an understanding of the evolution of guidance and counseling in the schools and the emergence of developmental comprehensive programs is the first step toward improving your school’s guidance and counseling program. Chapter 2 is based on this understanding and focuses on the issues and concerns in planning and organizing for guidance and counseling program improvement. Chapter 3 then presents a model guidance and counseling program based on the concept of life career development; it is organized around four basic elements. Chapter 4, the last chapter in the planning phase, discusses the steps involved in finding out how well your current program is working and where improvement is needed.

Part II: Designing

Chapter 5 begins the designing phase of the program improvement process and focuses on designing the program of your choice. Issues and steps in selecting the desired program structure for your comprehensive program are presented. Chapter 6 describes the necessary tasks required to plan the transition to a comprehensive guidance and counseling program.

Part III: Implementing

Chapter 7 presents the details of beginning a new program in a school or district, and Chapter 8 emphasizes the details of managing and maintaining the program. Chapter 9 first looks at how to ensure that school counselors have the necessary competence to develop, manage, and implement a comprehensive guidance and counseling program and then highlights counselor supervision procedures.

Part IV: Evaluating

Comprehensive guidance and counseling program evaluation is discussed in detail in Chapter 10. Program evaluation, personnel evaluation, and results evaluation are featured, with attention given to procedures for each.

Part V: Enhancing

Chapter 11 focuses on the use of data gathered from program, personnel, and results evaluation and from needs assessments to redesign and enhance a comprehensive guidance and counseling program that has been in place for a number of years. The chapter uses actual data gathered in a school district and describes in detail the way this school district built on the guidance and counseling program foundation it had established in the early 1980s to update and enhance its program to meet continuing and changing student, school district, and community needs.

Who Should Read This Book

A goal of this book is to inform and involve all members of a kindergarten through 12th-grade guidance and counseling staff in the development and management of comprehensive school guidance and counseling programs. Although specific parts are highlighted for guidance and counseling program leaders (central or building-level directors, supervisors, coordinators, department heads) and school administrators, the information provided is important for all to know and use. In addition, this book is designed for practitioners already on the job as well as for counselors-in-training and administrators-in-training. It can and should be used in preservice education as well as in-service education.

The Fifth Edition: What Is New?

All of the chapters in the fifth edition have been reorganized and updated to reflect current theory and practices. A more complete theory base for comprehensive guidance and counseling programs is provided, along with updated examples of the contents of various components of comprehensive guidance and counseling programs drawn from many state models and from the ASCA (2005) National Model. New information and practical ideas and methods have been added to assist school counselors and school counselor leaders in better understanding the issues involved in developing and managing comprehensive school guidance and counseling programs.

Increased attention is given in this fifth edition to the important topic of diversity. Increased attention is also given to expanded discussions of whom school counselors’ clients are and the range of issues they present. Also, increased attention is given to helping school counselors and their leaders be accountable for the work they do and for evaluating and reporting the impact of their programs’ activities and services on students’ academic, career, and personal and social development. In addition, increased attention is given to the issues and challenges that the leaders of comprehensive guidance and counseling programs face in an increasingly complex educational environment.

Finally, a new section, Your Progress Check, is found at the end of each chapter. This feature allows you to check the progress you are making as you move through the planning, designing, implementing, evaluating, and enhancing phases of change.

Concluding Thoughts

Some readers may think that guidance and counseling program improvement is a simple task requiring little staff time and few resources. This is not true. Substantial work can be completed during the first several years but, with the necessary resources available to ensure successful implementation, at least 4 to 5 years are usually required. To carry the program through the enhancement phase may require an additional 5 years. Then we recommend an ongoing program improvement process.

Moreover, the chapter organization may lead some readers to think that guidance and counseling program improvement activities follow one another in a linear fashion. Although a progression is involved, some of the activities described in Chapters 2 through 10 may be carried out concurrently. This is particularly true for the evaluation procedures described in Chapter 10, some of which are carried out from the beginning of the program improvement process throughout the life of the program. The program enhancement process follows evaluation and connects back to the beginning, but at a higher level, as program redesign unfolds. Thus, the process is spiral, not circular. Each time the redesign process unfolds, a new and more effective guidance and counseling program emerges.

Finally, it is important to understand that a comprehensive guidance and counseling program, as described in the chapters that follow, provides a common language for the program elements that enable students, parents, teachers, administrators, school board members, and school counselors in a school district to speak with a common voice when they describe what a program is. They all see the same thing and use the same language to describe the program’s framework. This is the power of common language, whether the program is in a small or large rural, urban, or suburban school district. Within the basic framework at the local district level, however, the guidance knowledge and skills (competencies) students are to learn, the activities and services to be provided, and the allocations of school counselor time are tailored specifically to student, school, and community needs and local resources. This provides the flexibility and opportunity for creativity for the personnel in every school district to develop and implement a comprehensive guidance and counseling program that makes sense for their districts. We are convinced that without the common language for the program elements and the obligation to tailor it to fit local school districts, guidance and counseling and the work of school counselors will be lost in the overall educational system and, as a result, will continue to be marginalized and seen as a supplemental activity that is nice to have, but not necessary.

References

American School Counselor Association. (2005). The ASCA National Model: A framework for school counseling programs (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Author.

Arredondo, P., Toporek, R., Brown, S., Jones, J., Locke, D. C., Sanchez, J., & Stadler, H. (1996). Operationalization of the multicultural counseling competencies. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 24, 42–78.

Aubrey, R. F. (1973). Organizational victimization of school counselors. The School Counselor, 20, 346–354.

Cottingham, H. F. (1973). Psychological education, the guidance function, and the school counselor. The School Counselor, 20, 340–345.

Gysbers, N. C., & Moore, E. J. (1981). Improving guidance programs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Harvard Graduate School of Education. (2011). Pathways to prosperity: Meeting the challenge of preparing young Americans for the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: Author.

Kehas, C. D. (1973). Guidance and the process of schooling: Curriculum and career education. The School Counselor, 20, 109–115.

National Association of Secondary School Principals. (2004). Breaking ranks II: Strategies for leading high school reform. Reston, VA: Author.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-110, 115 Stat. 1425 (2002).

Race to the Top. (2011). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_Top

Sprinthall, N. A. (1971). Guidance for human growth. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Sue, D. W., Arredondo, P., & McDavis, R. J. (1992). Multicultural counseling competencies and standards: A call to the profession. Journal of Counseling & Development, 70, 477–486.

Zhao, Y. (2009). Catching up or leading the way. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Acknowledgments

With this fifth edition, we gratefully acknowledge the substantial contributions of school counselors as they work with children, young people, parents, teachers, administrators, and community members throughout the United States. It is to school counselors and their leaders that we dedicate this book. At the same time, we also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of those individuals who helped us make all five editions of this book possible. Unfortunately, it is impossible to list them all, but know that we appreciate their support and encouragement. We particularly acknowledge the work of the counselors, head counselors, and administrators from Northside Independent School District, San Antonio, Texas. We appreciate the district’s willingness to host visitors who come to see a comprehensive guidance and counseling program at work. Thanks also to Linda Coats who typed a number of the revised chapters and helped assemble the revised chapters into the final book form. Finally, thanks to Carolyn Baker, director of publications at the American Counseling Association, for all of her help.

About the Authors

Norman C. Gysbers is a Curators’ Professor in the Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology at the University of Missouri—Columbia. He received his BA from Hope College, Holland, Michigan, in 1954. He was a teacher in the Muskegon Heights Michigan School District (1954–1956) and served in the U.S. Army Artillery (1956–1958). He received his MA (1959) and PhD (1963) from the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of the College of Education, University of Missouri, in 1963 as an assistant professor. In addition to his duties as an assistant professor, he also served as the licensed school counselor at the University Laboratory School until 1970.

He was awarded a Franqui Professorship from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, and lectured there in February 1984. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Hong Kong in May 2000, 2002, and 2004 and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in January 2001; a Scholar in Residence at the University of British Columbia in July–August 2000; and a Visiting Scholar at National Taiwan Normal University in January 2011.

His research and teaching interests are in career development, career counseling, and school guidance and counseling program development, management, and evaluation. He is author of 90 articles, 38 chapters in published books, 15 monographs, and 22 books, one of which was translated into Italian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.

He has received many awards, most notably the National Career Development Association’s Eminent Career Award in 1989, the American School Counselor Association’s Mary Gehrke Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004, the William T. Kemper Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2002, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2004, the Faculty/Alumni Award from the University of Missouri in 1997, and the Distinguished Faculty Award from the University of Missouri in 2008.

Gysbers was editor of The Career Development Quarterly from 1962 to 1970; president of the National Career Development Association, 1972–1973; president of the American Counseling Association, 1977–1978; and vice president of the Association of Career and Technical Education, 1979–1982. He was the editor of The Journal of Career Development from 1978 until 2006.

Patricia Henderson is a former director of guidance at the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas. She received her AB in English from Mount Holyoke College in 1962, her MA in guidance from California State University, San Jose, in 1967, and her EdD in educational leadership from Nova University in 1986. She is certified as a school counselor and midmanagement administrator by California and Texas. She has been a teacher, counselor, and administrator in public schools. She has been an adjunct professor at California State University, Fullerton; California State University, Long Beach; Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio; and the University of Texas at San Antonio and is currently at Texas A&M University—San Antonio.

Henderson consults with school districts and has conducted workshops at numerous professional meetings. Her professional interests are in school guidance and counseling; program development, management, implementation, evaluation, and improvement; enhancing roles of school counselors through supervision, staff leadership, and meaningful school counselor performance evaluation; creating systemic change through collaborative program development; and counselor supervision. She and Dr. Gysbers have also coauthored Leading and Managing Your School Guidance Program Staff (1998), Comprehensive Guidance Programs That Work—II (1997), and Implementing Comprehensive School Guidance Programs: Critical Issues and Successful Responses (2002). She wrote The Theory Behind the ASCA National Model, included in The ASCA National Model (2nd ed.). She is coauthor with Larry Golden of Case Studies in School Counseling (2007). She is the author of The New Handbook of Administrative Supervision in Counseling (2009). She has authored or coauthored 30 articles or chapters. She wrote The Comprehensive Guidance Program for Texas Public Schools: A Guide for Program Development, Pre-K–12th Grade (1990, 2004, in press) under the auspices of the Texas Education Agency and the Texas Counseling Association and Guidelines for Developing Comprehensive Guidance Programs in California Public Schools (1981) with D. Hays and L. Steinberg.

She has received awards from professional associations for her writing, research, and contributions to professional development and recognition as an outstanding supervisor at the state and national levels. She received the Texas Association for Counseling and Development Presidential Award in 1990, an Honorary Service Award from the California State PTA in 1978, and Lifetime Membership in the Texas PTA in 1999. She received the William Truax Award from the Texas Counseling Association in 2005, the Mary E. Gehrke Lifetime Achievement Award from the American School Counselor Association in 2006, and the 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision.

Henderson has been a member or chair of numerous committees and held leadership positions within the California Counseling Association, Texas Counseling Association, American School Counselor Association, Association for Counselor Education and Supervision, and American Counseling Association. She has been president of the Texas Counseling Association (1992–1993), Texas Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (1988–1989), and Texas Career Development Association (1995–1996).

Part I

Planning

Chapter 1

Evolution of Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Programs: From Position to Services to Program

Planning—Building a Foundation for Change

Study the history of guidance and counseling in the schools.

Learn about the people, events, and societal conditions that helped shape guidance and counseling in the schools.

Understand the implications of the shift from position to services to program in the conceptualization and organization of guidance and counseling.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the United States was deeply involved in the Industrial Revolution. It was a period of rapid industrial growth, social protest, social reform, and utopian idealism. Social protest and social reform were being carried out under the banner of the Progressive Movement, a movement that sought to change negative social conditions associated with the Industrial Revolution.

These conditions were the unanticipated effects of industrial growth. They included the emergence of cities with slums and immigrant-filled ghettos, the decline of puritan morality, the eclipse of the individual by organizations, corrupt political bossism, and the demise of the apprenticeship method of learning a vocation. (Stephens, 1970, pp. 148–149)

Guidance and counseling was born in these turbulent times as vocational guidance during the height of the Progressive Movement and as but one manifestation of the broader movement of progressive reform which occurred in this country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Stephens, 1970, p. 5). The beginnings of vocational guidance can be traced to the work of a number of individuals and social institutions. People such as Charles Merrill, Frank Parsons, Meyer Bloomfield, Jessie B. Davis, Anna Reed, E. W. Weaver, and David Hill, working through a number of organizations and movements such as the settlement house movement, the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, and schools in San Francisco, Boston, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Seattle, New York, and New Orleans, were all instrumental in formulating and implementing early conceptions of guidance and counseling.

Brewer (1942) stated that four conditions, acting together, led to the development of vocational guidance. He identified these conditions as the division of labor, the growth of technology, the extension of vocational education, and the spread of modern forms of democracy. He stated that none of these conditions alone were causative but all were necessary for the rise of vocational guidance during this time period. To these conditions, J. B. Davis (1956) added the introduction of commercial curriculums, the increase in enrollment in secondary schools leading to the introduction of coursework such as practical arts, manual training, and home economics and child labor problems.

This chapter traces the history of guidance and counseling in the schools from the beginning of the 20th century through the first decade of the 21st century. It opens with a review of guidance and counseling during the first two decades of the 1900s, focusing on the work of Frank Parsons and Jessie Davis, the early purposes of guidance and counseling, the appointment of teachers to the position of vocational counselor, the guidance and counseling work of administrators, the spread of guidance and counseling, and early concerns about the efficiency of the position model. The chapter continues with a discussion of the challenges and changes for guidance and counseling that occurred in the 1920s and 1930s. The changing purposes of guidance and counseling, as well as the emergence of the service model, are described. Then, two important federal laws from the 1940s and 1950s are presented and described. This discussion is followed by a focus on the 1960s, a time of new challenges and changes, a time when pupil personnel services provided a dominant organizational structure for guidance and counseling. It was also a time when elementary guidance and counseling emerged and a time when calls were heard about the need to change the then dominant organizational structure for guidance and counseling.

The next sections of the chapter focus on the emergence of comprehensive guidance and counseling programs in the 1960s and their implementation in the 1980s, 1990s, and the first decade of the 2000s across the United States. Attention is paid to the importance of federal and state legislation. The chapter continues with an emphasis on the promise of the 21st century: the full implementation of comprehensive guidance and counseling programs in every school district in the United States. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) National Model is described, along with pertinent state and federal legislation. The chapter closes with a presentation of five foundation premises that undergird comprehensive guidance and counseling programs.

Beginnings of Guidance and Counseling in the Schools: The First Two Decades of the 1900s

Work of Frank Parsons

The implementation of one of the first systematic conceptions of guidance and counseling in the United States took place in Civic Service House, Boston, Massachusetts, when the Boston Vocation Bureau was established in January 1908 by Mrs. Quincy Agassiz Shaw, based on plans drawn up by Frank Parsons, an American educator and reformer. The establishment of the Vocation Bureau was an outgrowth of Parsons’s work with individuals at Civic Service House. Parsons issued his first report on the bureau on May 1, 1908, and according to H. V. Davis (1969, p. 113), "This was an important report because the term vocational guidance apparently appeared for the first time in print as the designation of an organized service." It was also an important report because it emphasized that vocational guidance should be provided by trained experts and become part of every public school system.

Parsons’s conception of guidance stressed the scientific approach to choosing an occupation. The first paragraph in the first chapter of his book, Choosing a Vocation, illustrated his concern:

No step in life, unless it may be the choice of a husband or wife, is more important than the choice of a vocation. The wise selection of the business, profession, trade, or occupation to which one’s life is to be devoted and the development of full efficiency in the chosen field are matters of deepest movement to young men and to the public. These vital problems should be solved in a careful, scientific way, with due regard to each person’s aptitudes, abilities, ambitions, resources, and limitations, and the relations of these elements to the conditions of success in different industries. (Parsons, 1909, p. 3)

Work of Jessie B. Davis

When Jessie B. Davis moved from Detroit, Michigan, to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to assume the principalship of Central High School in 1907, he initiated a plan to organize an entire school for systematic guidance (J. B. Davis, 1956, p. 176). He used grade-level principals as counselors to about 300 students each. Interestingly, he did not see vocational guidance as a new profession. According to Krug (1964), he saw it as the work of school principals.

As part of Davis’s plan to provide systematic guidance to all students, he convinced his teachers of English to set aside the English period on Fridays to use oral and written composition as a vehicle to deliver vocational guidance. The details of his plan are described in his book Vocational and Moral Guidance (J. B. Davis, 1914) and are outlined briefly here. Note that vocational guidance through the English curriculum began in Grade 7 and continued through Grade 12. Note, too, the progression of topics covered at each grade level. School counselors today will understand and appreciate the nature and structure of Davis’s system.

Grade 7: vocational ambition

Grade 8: the value of education

Grade 9: character self-analysis (character analysis through biography)

Grade 10: the world’s work—a call to service (choosing a vocation)

Grade 11: preparation for one’s vocation

Grade 12: social ethics and civic ethics

Early Purposes of Guidance and Counseling

In the beginning, the early 1900s, school guidance and counseling were called vocational guidance. Vocational guidance had a singular purpose. It was seen as a response to the economic, educational, and social problems of those times and was concerned with the entrance of young people into the work world and the conditions they might find there. Economic concerns focused on the need to better prepare workers for the workplace, whereas educational concerns arose from a need to increase efforts in schools to help students find purpose for their education as well as their employment. Social concerns emphasized the need for changing school methods and organization as well as for exerting more control over conditions of labor in child-employing industries (U.S. Bureau of Education, 1914).

Two distinctly different perspectives concerning the initial purpose of vocational guidance were present from the very beginning. Wirth (1983) described one perspective, espoused by David Snedden and Charles Prosser, that followed the social efficiency philosophy. According to this perspective, the task of education was to aid the economy to function as efficiently as possible (Wirth, 1983, pp. 73–74). Schools were to be designed to prepare individuals for work, with vocational guidance being a way to sort individuals according to their various capacities, preparing them to obtain a job.

The other perspective of vocational guidance was based on principles of democratic philosophy that emphasized the need to change the conditions of industry as well as assist students to make educational and occupational choices. According to Wirth (1980), The ‘Chicago school’—[George Hubert] Mead, [John] Dewey, and [Frank] Leavitt—brought the perspective of democratic philosophy to the discussion of vocational guidance (p. 114). Leavitt (1914), in a speech at the founding meeting of the National Vocational Guidance Association in 1913 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, stressed the need to modify the conditions and methods in industry. He stated,

It is well within the range of possibility that vocational guidance, when carried out in a comprehensive, purposeful, and scientific way, may force upon industry many modifications which will be good not only for children but equally for the industry. (p. 80)

Position of Vocational Counselors

The work of Frank Parsons and the Vocation Bureau soon became known across the country. Out of it grew the first National Conference on Vocational Guidance, held in Boston in 1910, followed by a similar conference in New York in 1912 and the formation of the National Vocational Guidance Association in Grand Rapids in 1913 (W. C. Ryan, 1919). It also had a direct impact on Boston public schools because in 1909 the Boston School Committee asked personnel in the Vocation Bureau to outline a program of vocational guidance for the public schools of Boston. On June 7, 1909, the Boston School Committee approved the bureau’s suggestion and instructed the Superintendent of Schools to appoint a committee of six to work with the director (Bloomfield, 1915, p. 34). Upon completion of its work, the committee issued a report that identified three primary aims for vocational guidance in the Boston schools:

Three aims have stood out above all others: first, to secure thoughtful consideration, on the part of parents, pupils, and teachers, of the importance of a life-career motive; second, to assist in every way possible in placing pupils in some remunerative work on leaving school; and third, to keep in touch with and help them thereafter, suggesting means of improvement and watching the advancement of those who need such aid. (Bloomfield, 1915, p. 36)

These aims were implemented by a central office staff and by appointed vocational counselors in each elementary and secondary school in Boston. Teachers were appointed to the position of vocational counselor often with no relief from their teaching duties and with no additional pay (Brewer, 1922; Ginn, 1924). The vocational counseling duties these teachers were asked to perform in addition to their regular teaching duties included

To be the representative of the Department of Vocational Guidance in the district.

To attend all meetings of counselors called by the Director of Vocational Guidance.

To be responsible for all material sent out to the school by the Vocational Guidance Department.

To gather and keep on file occupational information.

To arrange with the local branch librarians about shelves of books bearing upon educational and vocational guidance.

To arrange for some lessons in occupations in connection with classes in Oral English and Vocational Civics, or wherever principal and counselor deem it wise.

To recommend that teachers show the relationship of their work to occupational problems.

To interview pupils in grades six and above who are failing, attempt to find the reason, and suggest a remedy.

To make use of the cumulative record card when advising children.

To consult records of intelligence tests when advising children.

To make a careful study with grades seven and eight of the bulletin A Guide to the Choice of Secondary School.

To urge children to remain in school.

To recommend conferences with parents of children who are failing or leaving school.

To interview and check cards of all children leaving school, making clear to them the requirements for obtaining working certificates.

To be responsible for the filling in of Blank 249, and communicate with recommendations to the Department of Vocational Guidance when children are in need of employment. (Ginn, 1924, pp. 5–7)

Vocational Guidance Spreads Across the Country

At about the same time that the Boston schools were establishing a vocational guidance program, a group of New York City teachers, called the Student Aid Committee of the High School Teachers’ Association, under the leadership of E. W. Weaver, was active in establishing a program in the New York City schools. A report issued in 1909 by the committee indicated that they had passed the experimental stage and were ready to request that

(1) the vocational officers of the large high schools be allowed at least one extra period of unassigned time to attend to this work; (2) that they be provided with facilities for keeping records of students and employment; and (3) that they have opportunities for holding conferences with students and employers. (W. C. Ryan, 1919, p. 25)

Vocational guidance was also being introduced into the public schools in other parts of the United States. In Chicago, it first took the form of a central office to serve students applying for employment certificates, to publish vocational bulletins, and for placement. In other cities such as Buffalo, New York; Cincinnati, Ohio; DeKalb, Illinois; Los Angeles; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; New York; Philadelphia; Rochester, New York; and San Jose, California, vocational guidance took several different forms but relied mostly on disseminating occupational information and on conducting occupational surveys, placement activities, and life career classes.

According to W. C. Ryan (1919, p. 26),

by April 1914, approximately 100 public high schools, representing some 40 cities, were reported to the U.S. Bureau of Education as having definitely organized conscious plans of vocational guidance, through vocation bureaus, consultation committees, trial vocational courses, or regular courses in vocations.

Titles of these offices varied and included, for example, the Division of Attendance and Vocational Guidance in Minneapolis. This expansion continued throughout the next 4 years, so that by 1918, 10 years after the establishment of the Vocation Bureau by Parsons in Boston, 932 four-year high schools reported vocation bureaus, employment departments, or similar devices for placing pupils (W. C. Ryan, 1919, p. 36).

Challenges to Vocational Guidance

At the same time that progress was being made in institutionalizing vocational guidance in the schools, substantial challenges to this process were also present. Brewer (1942), in his history of vocational guidance, described a number of these challenges. One challenge he noted was high interest followed by a loss of that interest because of personnel changes. Another challenge was from conservatives who began their barrage of criticism when the traditional curriculum was in any way endangered (p. 87).

In addition to these challenges, other challenges included a lack of a practical plan to develop and implement vocational guidance, a lack of adequate preparation of teachers to carry out vocational guidance work, and a lack of resources and equipment. Two quotes from Brewer’s history illustrate these challenges and their consequences.

Vocational guidance is not a job for amateurs, to be assigned to a person because he or she has a warm heart. It should not be regarded as an adjunct to the teaching of English or mathematics. It is not a side issue of the work of deans of men or women. It is not a pastime to be indulged in during odd moments by a school principal, vice-principal, placement officer, registrar, or attendance officer. Vocational guidance is a distinct profession, just as independent as the work of the physician, the lawyer, the nurse, or any other highly specialized worker. (Brewer, 1942, p. 88, quoting Harry D. Kitson)

Another common reason for abandoned plans was because the vocational counselor had nothing but an office and his mental equipment behind him. Vocational training, on the other hand, had back of it an investment of thousands of dollars in machines and equipment and could not so easily be folded up. It was simple enough in times of financial stress, or for other reasons, to assign a vocational counselor back to a more important teaching or administrative position. (Brewer, 1942, p. 88)

Early Concerns About the Position of Vocational Counselor

By the 1920s, as the guidance and counseling movement (vocational guidance) was spreading across the United States, concerns were already being expressed about the way guidance and counseling was organized, was being perceived by others, and was being practiced. In a review of the Boston school system, Brewer (1922) stated that the work was commendable and promising (p. 36). At the same time, he expressed concern about a lack of effective centralization and supervision. What was done and how well it was done were left up to individual principals and counselors. Myers (1923), in an article titled A Critical Review of Present Developments in Vocational Guidance With Special Reference to Future Prospects, also expressed concern:

The first development to which I wish to call attention is a growing recognition of vocational guidance as an integral part of organized education, not as something different and apart from education that is being wished upon the schools by a group of enthusiasts because there is no other agency to handle it. . . . Second, vocational guidance is becoming recognized as a specialized educational function requiring special natural qualifications and special training. . . . A third development that claims attention is an increasing appreciation that a centralized, unified program of vocational guidance for the entire school system of a city is essential to the most effective work. We are rapidly passing out of the stage when each high school and junior high school can be left to organize and conduct vocational guidance as it sees fit. (pp. 139–140)

In expressing these concerns, Myers was calling attention to problems associated with the position model in which teachers were designated as vocational counselors with no structure to work in and little or no released time from their teaching duties. Apparently, the position model for guidance and counseling caused it to be seen as an ancillary activity that could be conducted by anybody. In contrast, he stressed the need to view guidance as an integral part of education that required trained personnel working in a unified program of guidance. Myers’s words were prophetic. These words are the same as those we use today to describe the importance, personnel requirements, and structure of comprehensive guidance and counseling programs in schools.

Myers (1923) made another astute observation about some unanticipated outcomes the prevailing way of organizing guidance and counseling (the position model) was causing in the schools:

Another tendency dangerous to the cause of vocational guidance is the tendency to load the vocational counselor with so many duties foreign to the office that little real counseling can be done. The principal, and often the counselor . . . [have] a very indefinite idea of the proper duties of this new officer. The counselor’s time is more free from definite assignments with groups or classes of pupils than is that of the ordinary teacher. If well chosen he [or she] has administrative ability. It is perfectly natural, therefore, for the principal to assign one administrative duty after another to the counselor until he [or she] becomes practically assistant principal, with little time for the real work of a counselor. In order to prevent this tendency from crippling seriously the vocational guidance program it is important that the counselor shall be well trained, that the principal shall understand more clearly what counseling involves, and that there shall be efficient supervision from a central office. (p. 140)

Myers’s (1923) words were again prophetic. They pointed directly at the heart of the problem with the position model, that is, the ease at which other duties as assigned can become part of guidance and counseling and the work of school counselors, a problem that continues to plague school counselors even today.

Guidance and Counseling in the 1920s and 1930s: Challenges and Changes

Changes in Purpose of Guidance and Counseling

The 1920s witnessed the continued expansion of guidance and counseling in the schools. During this period of time, the nature and structure of guidance and counseling were being influenced by the mental hygiene and measurement movements, developmental studies of children, the introduction of cumulative records, and progressive education. In effect, Vocational guidance was taking on the new vocabulary present in the culture at large and in the educational subculture; the language of mental health, progressive education, child development, and measurement theory (A. H. Johnson, 1972, p. 160). As a result, additional purposes for guidance and counseling were identified.

Educational Purposes

The addition of an educational purpose for guidance was a natural outgrowth of a change that was taking place in education itself. With the advent of the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education (National Education Association [NEA], 1918), education, at least philosophically, began to shift from preparation for college alone to education for total life.

This was a life to be characterized by an integration of health with command of fundamental processes, worthy home membership, vocational competence, civic responsibility, worthy use of leisure time and ethical character. . . . Given these Seven Cardinal Principles, an education now appeared equally vocationally relevant—from this one could construe that all of education is guidance into later vocational living. (A. H. Johnson, 1972, pp. 27–28)

This change occurred partly because the leadership of guidance and counseling, particularly on the part of people like John Brewer (1922), was increasingly more educationally oriented. It also occurred, according to Stephens (1970), because the NEA’s Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education (CRSE) had so broadened the definition of vocation as to soften it, if not to virtually eliminate it as a cardinal principle of secondary education (p. 113). This move by the CRSE, together with the more educationally oriented leadership of guidance, served to separate what had been twin reform movements of education—vocational education and vocational guidance, as Stephens called them—leaving vocational guidance to struggle with its own identity. This point is made in a similar way by A. H. Johnson (1972):

The 1918 report of the NEA’s Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education construed almost all of the education as training for efficient vocational and avocational life. No element in the curriculum appeared salient after the CRSE report. This was no less true of vocational education. Thus, as a cardinal principle vocational education was virtually eliminated. The once correlated responsibility of vocational guidance lost its historical anchorage to vocational education and was set adrift in the public school system to be redefined by the logic of the education subculture. (p. 204)

Personal Adjustment Purposes

During the 1920s, it was clear that less attention was being focused on the social, industrial, and national and political aspects of individuals, whereas considerably more attention was being given to the personal, educational, and statistically measurable aspects of individuals. More specifically, at least within the school setting, there apparently was a displacement of the traditional vocational, socioeconomic, and political concerns from the culture at large to the student of the educational subculture whose vocational socialization problems were reinterpreted as educational and psychological problems of personal adjustment (A. H. Johnson, 1972, p. 221).

As a result of this displacement of concerns, vocational guidance practices began to emphasize a more personal, diagnostic, and clinical orientation to students, with an increasing emphasis on psychological measurement.

Content to explore with yet greater precision the psychological dimensions of the student, and guaranteed a demand for testing services in the public school system, the guidance movement defined its professional role to meet the expectations of its institutional colleagues. Thus there developed a mutual role expectation that requires analysis and synthesis (gathering and organizing personal data), diagnosis (comparing personal data to test norms, and occupational or professional profiles), prognosis (indicating available career choices), and counseling (or treating, to effect desired adjustment then or in the future). This formed the basis for the clinical model. Testing had created the demand for a unique technical skill around which the clinical model could develop, and around which vocational guidance had established a professional claim. (A. H. Johnson, 1972, p. 138)

Further evidence of this can be seen in the 1921 and 1924 statements of the Principles of Vocational Guidance of the National Vocational Guidance Association (Allen, 1927). These principles emphasized testing, the use of an extensive cumulative record system, information, the study of occupations, counseling, and case studies. Between 1925 and 1930, as the personal adjustment purpose of vocational guidance emerged, counseling became of primary concern. Vocational guidance became problem oriented, centering on adjustable psychological, personal problems—not social, moral, religious, ethical, or political problems (A. H. Johnson, 1972, p. 201).

What Should Be the Duties of the Counselor?

One of the tasks of the profession in the 1920s and early 1930s was to establish the preferred list of duties to be carried out by individuals filling the position of counselor. The task was to decide which duties would constitute a complete program or, as Proctor (1930) stated, the standard setup for guidance and counseling. Myers (1931) prepared a list of actual counselor duties. There were 37 items on the list. After reviewing the list, Myers stated,

Here is, indeed, a formidable list of things which counselors do. It is obvious that many of these are essential to an effective guidance program and may properly be expected of a counselor. It is equally obvious that some of them are routine administrative or clerical matters which have nothing whatever to do with counseling. Evidently, under the guise of setting up a counseling program, some junior and senior high school principals have unloaded a large number of their office duties upon the counselor. (p. 344)

In the same article, Myers (1931) classified the preferred duties into the following categories:

Interviewing or conferring with individual pupils

Meeting with pupils in groups

Conferring with teachers and other members of the school staff

Conferring with special officers of the school system

Conferring with parents

Conferring with representatives of industry, business, and the professions

Working with social agencies of the community. (pp. 345–347)

As guidance and counseling was becoming institutionalized in schools and was in the process of being defined and implemented, the expectations of other educational personnel concerning guidance and counseling were also being shaped. This seemed to be particularly true for school administrators. A. H. Johnson (1972) underlined this when he pointed out that administrative obligations were a substantial part of the new professional responsibilities. In fact, many suggested vocational guidance responsibilities delineated by the profession became administrative obligations when incorporated into the school settings. Professional responsibilities became in fact administrative obligations for which guidance would be held accountable not to professionally determined values but values of the education subculture interpreted through its administrative structure (A. H. Johnson, 1972, p. 191).

Services Model of Guidance and Counseling

By the late 1920s and early 1930s, various specialists, in addition to counselors, had joined the staffs of schools. These specialists included personnel such as attendance officers, visiting teachers, school nurses, and school physicians. Myers (1935) suggested that the phrase pupil personnel work be used to coordinate the work of these specialists and that someone from central office be given the responsibility for overseeing their work. Myers went on to point out that probably no activity in the entire list suffers as much from lack of a coordinated program as does guidance, and especially the counseling aspect of it (p. 807).

Given Myers’s (1935) point about the lack of a coordinated program for guidance (remember that the prevailing organization for guidance and counseling at that time was a position with a list of duties), what would be the best way to provide a more coordinated program for guidance and counseling? The concept that emerged was guidance services. Five services were typically identified: individual inventory, information, counseling, placement, and follow-up. According to Roeber, Walz, and Smith (1969),

This conception of guidance services was developed during a period in the history of the guidance movement when it was necessary to have some definitive statement regarding the need for and nature of a more organized form of guidance. This delineation of guidance services generally served its purpose and gave the guidance movement something tangible to sell to state departments of education and to local schools. (p. 55)

Counseling Service Predominates: Student Adjustment Is the Focus

Although all of the services of guidance were seen as important, one service, counseling, began to predominate over the other services in the 1930s. The emergence of the importance of counseling had begun earlier in the 1920s as a result of the more personal, diagnostic, and clinical orientation to students that was occurring during that time period. By the 1930s, attention to a more personal, diagnostic, and clinical orientation to students intensified. As a result, counseling, with its increasing attention on the personal adjustment of students, began to be seen as something separate and distinct from vocational guidance.

Up to 1930, . . . not much progress had been made in differentiating this function [personal counseling] from the preexisting programs of vocational and educational guidance. After that date, more and more of a separation appeared as guidance workers in the high schools became aware of increasingly large numbers of students who were troubled by personal problems involving hostility to authority, sex relationships, unfortunate home situations, and financial stringencies. (Rudy, 1965, p. 25)

Bell (1939), in a book on personal counseling, stated that the goal of counseling was student adjustment through personal contact between counselor and student. Adjustment in his thinking included all phases of an individual’s life: school, health, occupational, motor and mechanical, social, home, emotional, and religious. Koos and Kefauver (1937) also noted the theme of adjustment when they stated that guidance had two phases, the distributive and the adjustive. The goal of the first phase was to distribute students to educational and vocational opportunities. The goal of the second phase was to help students make adjustments to educational and vocational situations. M. E. Campbell (1932) added that guidance needed to focus on problems of adjustment to health, religion, recreation, to family and friends, to school, and to work (p. 4).

Vocational Guidance Continues to Be Defined

According to M. E. Campbell (1932), vocational guidance was defined as

the process of assisting the individual to choose an occupation, prepare for it, enter upon and progress in it. As preparation for an occupation involves decisions in the choice of studies, choice of curriculums, and the choice of schools and colleges, it becomes evident that vocational guidance cannot be separated from educational guidance. (p. 4)

Campbell went on to distinguish between vocational guidance and vocational education (career and technical education) and to emphasize that vocational guidance was a process that helped students explore all occupations, not just those for which vocational education provided training.

As vocational guidance and vocational education are linked together in many minds, a statement about this relationship may clarify the situation. Vocational education is the giving of training to persons who desire to work in a specific occupation. Vocational guidance offers information and assistance which leads to the choice of an occupation and the training which precedes it. It does not give such training. The term vocational refers to any occupation, be it medicine, law, carpentry, or nursing. Preparation for many occupations and professions must be planned in the secondary school and in college by taking numerous courses, which are not usually known as vocational. Vocational guidance concerns itself, therefore, with pupils in the academic courses in high school or students of the liberal arts in college, as well as with the pupils in the trade and commercial courses, which have become known as vocational education. (p. 4)

This distinction is important because, from the 1930s to the present, this was and is a point of contention in defining the focus and scope of guidance and counseling in career and technical education legislation. Some individuals contend that vocational guidance is guidance and counseling for career and technical education students only, and that if money was made available, it should be spent only for the guidance and counseling of students in these programs.

Federal Initiatives Begin

Although the educational and personal adjustment themes for guidance continued to play a dominant role in guidance and counseling practice in the schools during the 1930s, the vocational emphasis also continued to show strength. In February 1933, the National Occupational Conference, funded by a Carnegie grant, opened its doors. The activities of the National Occupational Conference included studies and research related to the problems of occupational adjustment, book publication, and the development of a service that provided information and consultation about vocational guidance activities. The National Occupational Conference for a time also provided joint support for Occupations, the official journal of the National Vocational Guidance Association.

In 1938, a national advisory committee on education, originally appointed in 1936 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, issued a report that pointed to the need for an occupational information service at the national level as well as for guidance and placement services as a part of a sound program of vocational education. As a result of these recommendations, and with funds from Vocational Education and from the Commissioner of Education (Studebaker, 1938), the Occupational Information and Guidance Service was established in 1938 in the Vocational Division of the U.S. Office of Education. Richard Allen served for a few months as the chief of the unit before Harry Jager assumed the post (Wellman, 1978). Although the service was located in the Vocational Division, it was not designed to be exclusively vocational in nature. This point was made clear in a document, Principles Underlying the Organization and Administration of the Occupational Information and Guidance Service, issued by the U.S. Office of Education in 1940.

The functions to be performed by the Occupational Information and Guidance Service are to be as broad and complete as it is practicable for the Office to provide for at any given time within the limits of funds, cooperative assistance from various organizations, both within the government and outside, and other assets. The activities in which the service will be interested will include such phases of guidance as vocational guidance, personal guidance, educational guidance, and placement. While, with respect to personnel, no service in the Office can now be said to be complete, the various divisions or services go as far as possible in their respective fields in meeting needs or requests for service. Thus, for example, in the field of education for exceptional children, a service which would require 15 or 20 professional workers in the office if it were even to approximate completeness in numbers and types of persons needed, we have only one specialist. Yet this specialist is responsible for representing the Office in handling all problems and service in this particular field. (Smith, 1951, p. 66)

Of particular importance was the statement that the activities in which the service will be interested will include such phases of guidance as vocational guidance, personal guidance, educational guidance, and placement. Not only did the statement clearly outline the broad mission of the service and, as a result, of guidance and counseling in the schools, but it also described a currently popular way of describing guidance and counseling as having three phases: vocational, personal, and educational. Once the Occupational Information and Guidance Service was established at the federal level, it also became possible to establish guidance offices in state departments of education. Such funds could be used only for state offices, however. No funds could be used to support guidance and counseling at the local level.

Reimbursement was provided for state supervision under the George Dean Act [an Act to Provide for the Further Development of Vocational Education in the several states and territories; Pub. L. No. 673] and the number of states with a state guidance supervisor increased from 2 to 28 between 1938 and 1942. The Occupational Information and Guidance Service was instrumental